versusnurture | nineteen ♢ video

Entry tags:

nineteen ♢ video

[When the feed comes on, the first thing there is is a wall and half of a desk. Those people on board who've been inside will know it as Abigail's room. There's a small blood smear on the edge of the desk, another dark spot on the corner of the lens.]

[She doesn't turn it towards herself, but the camera does move towards the desk, is set down at the edge of it. Two hands appear in the frame, blood-caked, palm-up. There's blood under her nails, too, drier blood that's oxidized to a deep, almost black color.]

[She doesn't say anything. But after a moment, there's a strangled noise, and she knocks the camera off the desk. The briefest flash of dark hair and a pale face; then it hits the floor and shuts off.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

if it's a thing I can accomplish, it's yours.

Yes. He knows me also.

I hurt him

I need you to find Ben and stay with him

Go?

[Her voice is distant, like it's coming through a tunnel. She didn't go anywhere, she was taken. Went willingly, her feet moving one in front of the other like a good girl's, but she was taken--was led--did not have a say in the destination. One place after another. They were all dark.]

[I went where he told me. She doesn't say it. Just gnaws her lip and looks down at her hands, picking blood out from under her fingernails.]

Do you remember the knife?

[Hannibal's knife, curved like a sickle. It looms large in her mind, larger than it was in life, until it's too big to fit in the room without cutting into her throat.]

[Entering quickly and obediently when Steph instructs her to, Abigail makes a beeline to the bathroom. She turns on the cold water and begins to scrub the blood, mostly dry now, from her hands. It's halfway down the drain before she realizes Steph's spoken and she's just been standing here, paralyzed, letting the water run.]

Um. [She's about to say water, but then realizes she's exhausted.] Coffee, please.

How much? [And, almost as an afterthought:] Why?

in the stomach. I stabbed him. he got too close.

Sure. Milk or sugar?

[ Abby seems a little traumatized at the moment, so Steph tries to give her some space. She seems to be doing okay in the bathroom... She should probably grab a nail file for the poor girl to clean under her nails too.

She pours the just-warmer-than-lukewarm coffee into two mugs, one for each of them, and sets Abby's on the coffee table. She'll put the milk and sugar nearby if Abby wants either. ]

And Flannery O'Connor

i went away and came back once too

it was all a jumbled rush for me

do you want me to come over now? it's okay if you dont

he's not with you?

all right. where'd you last see him?

[ There's a hesitation, a silence. ]

The thing about humans is - we can choose why. We can hunt to kill, or we can hunt to study. To discover.

[Maybe he should have asked if she wanted to see him. Maybe he should tread more lightly. But he sees that one, quick shot of her face, and she is here, and there's blood, and he doesn't think past that. He doesn't think past that at all.

So many people have gone, but at least one came back. At least Abigail, who deserves the chance most of all, came back. He's not sure what that means for inmates. He's not sure he wants to know what it means, but he'll find out anyway. If she wants him to know, he can't not listen.

It only takes half a minute - maybe a minute, since he resists that urge to lope on all fours. But soon enough after seeing the video, he's at her door, knocking. It's hard not to just pound his fist against the door, but somehow, he resists.]

[He has been ignoring everyone from the semi-comfort of his infirmary bed. Ignoring kindness, responding to compassion and sympathy with hostility. Erecting walls. Creating distance.

Despite all of that seeing Abigail has returned strikes a note of relief in him, seeing her bloody creates a pinprick of concern. And both cause him to be angry with himself; his first impulse is to scratch it out, do whatever he can to snuff this weakness out of him.

But no, he reminds himself, forcing calm. Abigail Hobbs was one of his resources from the very beginning. She was helpful when he needed it, understood things he didn't need to say. Back and forth, they offered just the right amount of trust.

If he loses her it will be no great loss, he thinks. But if he can, it would still benefit him to keep her on as an ally.]

You're back, Miss Hobbs? I won't ask what happened, or if you're all right...I'm certain more than a few have beaten me to it. But do let me know if there is anything just now that you need from me.

[His voice is cool and clipped, the way he spoke to her more at the very beginning. When all he cared about was information, usefulness, rather than individual people.]

[Ben feels as good as new; he's not paying attention to that or it would bother him more, but instead he cares only that he can now function at peak performance. He does not have to nurse a healing gut wound as he makes his way back down to Abigail's cabin, stopping by his own only to collect the one belonging of hers he held onto, to drop off the knife for later repair, and to pick up her file. He knows instantly that it has changed, flipping through it where he pulls it from its drawer, but he doesn't stay to read it. He returns to her.

The front of his grey t-shirt is still maroon and stiff with dried and drying blood, it still clings to the inside of his field jacket, but his hands are clean and he takes care to keep the bear clean as well. He reads a few lines between the levels as he walks, and he feels something solidifying in his chest, something hot and sharp and heavy.

Ben knocks when he arrives, but he has distanced himself from everything around him by the time he does so.]

Abigail, it's Ben.

Did he die? [He'd forgive Abigail if he had, she's as close to certain of that as it's possible to be without knowing it for a fact.]

[Hannibal is a mess. It's not entirely visible from the outside, he has found the time to breathe, to think, to file all his angers, all his furies, in the way he would have at home. He places mental business cards in a mental rotary, tucks it away in the drawer of an elegant desk in his newly restored memory palace.

It vanished on him, and knowing that still makes his heart stutter in a way that violence and murder never have.

Not never. Just not for a very long time.

It's some time before he sees this video, lost as it was in the sea of something other that he has been living. When he does spot it, he is momentarily adrift. Alive, not alive, alive. He swallows hard, and does not go to her. It's difficult to resist, but it's important.]

Abigail.

[He is very nearly emotional. He is concerned.]

Hannibal?

[He's here. It feels like she's exhaling a thousand held breaths at once. Oh, god, he's here, he is--he hasn't left--he'll tell her what to do.]

[All of a sudden she's crying, relief and dread twisting in her stomach. Bile rises in her mouth, and she almost throws up, almost, swallows it down, but she sobs and sobs before she can get herself under control to string words together. When she finally does, when she gets the camera set up so she can look at him, she's barely coherent, her face streaked with tears, her lip trembling.]

I thought you were gone! I thought--

[A shuddering breath; she bites her lip hard enough that it goes white and presses her cool palms to her warm cheeks. No, no, no, no, no.]

I thought you left. Don't leave.

[She has laid her bait by now. She's done what she was trained to do, once and again by two men who she called father. She is a little calmer, but not much, sitting at the edge of her bed with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes closed. Now her hands are clean, the blood washed off in Stephanie's sink.]

I'm here. [She's here; she is present; she is alive; she is solid.] Come in.

[She trusts him and doesn't trust him. She doesn't trust the way she trusts him, instinctively, like there's no way not to. But she wants him close all the same, wants to cling to his shirtfront and cry, wants to talk to him like an adult, like she hasn't talked to anyone in ages.]

[It's all very confusing.]

[He hears her cry, and exhales a less than completely steady breath. He presses a hand briefly over his mouth, drops it, shifts in all those small ways that, for him, scream of something less than ease. Less than comfort. Less than control.

He has been out of control for so long that if he wasn't so careful, he thinks he might shake. But he is being careful.]

I will not leave you, Abigail.

[It's a small change, slight but important. He will leave, one day. But it will be after, or with her.]

I'm here.

[She doesn't respond immediately. There is, to be honest, quite a lot going on. Derek Powers is an uncertain piece of a very large puzzle. Most people, when she hears their voice, fit somewhere as enemies or friends in the schema that is overlaid in her mind, the part of her memory that was gone and is returning.]

[But he's complicated. The way he speaks now is familiar, but doesn't feel as familiar as it should be. She has to close her eyes and press her fingers to the bridge of her nose before she can think of what the difference is, where the change began. She has to take time to dredge up that memory.]

[When she responds, it's with confusion, her voice thick like she's thinking about something far away.]

You're . . .

The Red Queen hypothesis. That was you?

[She isn't expecting him - how could she be? For a moment she even considers letting the knocking continue, acting like she isn't here. It would be an obvious lie, but she doesn't know who's there.]

[Instead, she grips her bloody knife in her bloody hands and opens the door a crack, peering out into the hallway. She doesn't react much when she sees him; just furrows her brows and stares with wide eyes at this boy with his fist raised against her door.]

That's right. You don't remember?

[He can't entirely keep the puzzlement, the worry from bleeding through a bit there. It's not everything he used to give her, but it's more than what he just was.]

no. he said he'd be okay. but I feel bad.

[Her emotions are so truncated right now, she isn't sure that's right. Is it 'bad' that she feels? Or is it just confusion?]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 3 of 10

nineteen ♢ video

[text/private]

private

private

[text/private]

spam

spam

private

private

Re: spam

text/private

text; private

[text/private]

video / private

spam }

[voice ; private]

no subject

private

private }

private }

no subject

private }

[voice ; private]

spam }

[voice ; private]

private